Transport for London's top management paid themselves more than £17 million in salaries and bonuses last year, an Evening Standard investigation has found. The disclosure comes as the authority's managers face mounting criticism for their almost total failure to provide bus and Tube service during last week's snowfall.

One hundred and twenty-three TfL managers earned more than £100,000 in 2007/8. By contrast, the Treasury, responsible for the entire UK economy, had just 15 six-figure earners.

The top TfL earner, whom the organisation refused to identify but is believed to be former Transport Commissioner Bob Kiley, made £540,000, and the present Commissioner, Peter Hendy, between £425,000 and £450,000. Job descriptions and salaries of most of these individuals, obtained by the Standard under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal:

The average pay, benefits and bonuses of TfL's top management last year was £140,000 — £2,500 higher than the Mayor.

Fifteen TfL managers, including the director of marketing, earned more than the Prime Minister.

Of the 108 six-figure managers whose job descriptions were disclosed to us, only 16, mostly at the lower end of the scale, are actually involved in operating bus and train services.

By contrast 46 of the most highly-paid officials are administrators or policy officers and 36 are accountants. Seven are lawyers and three are PRs.

At least three managers were paid six-figure salaries for running projects that did not exist.

Andrew Boff, a Tory member of the London Assembly's transport committee, said: "If ever there was proof that TfL needed reform, this is it. I've been very frustrated with TfL's performance. It's an organisation that seems to be there to justify its own existence. Reforming it is possibly the biggest project that Boris has to tackle."

A TfL spokesman said the organisation had 27 million passenger journeys a day, adding: "We must recruit and retain high-calibre professionals to manage the delivery of a multi-billion pound investment programme which is modernising the Tube, preparing for the 2012 Games and building ­Crossrail."

The spokesman said those paid more than £100,000 represented around 0.6 per cent of TfL's then 22,000 staff. However, the number of high earners has risen dramatically in recent years. In 1982, only one employee of the then London Transport, the chief executive, Keith Bright, was paid the equivalent of £100,000 or more.

Mr Bright earned £42,000, equivalent to £110,000 today, roughly a quarter of what his successor, Mr Hendy, makes. Even the then head of the Underground, Tony Ridley, was paid only £34,500, equivalent to £71,500 today. His successor, Tim O'Toole, is on the same as Mr Hendy. Both TfL men were paid almost twice as much last year as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

TfL salaries for the year ending this April will be higher still but little or no information is available on them until the organisation's annual report is published in the autumn. Even this, however, will not identify the jobs and salaries of individuals. Freedom of Information requests, such as that filed by the Standard, are the only way of obtaining this data.

The explosion in the number of TfL's high earners and the sums they are paid comes even though the organisation they run has shrunk by more than half since the 1980s. TfL no longer directly operates bus services or employs bus drivers, nor is it responsible for maintenance on three Tube lines.

Under Ken Livingstone's mayoralty the number of well-paid managers at TfL grew by at least 550 per cent. In 2001/2, Mr Livingstone's first full year as Mayor, just nine managers in the so-called "TfL Corporation" — its corporate centre and surface transport divisions, excluding the Underground — earned more than £100,000. Only 12 managers earned more than £86,000, equivalent to £100,000 in 2008 money. By last year, however, 66 managers in the TfL Corporation earned more than £100,000. (The comparison in both years excludes the Underground, since this was not under Mr Livingstone's control in 2001/2).

Mr Hendy, 55, is one of the more colourful of TfL's top earners. He is the grandson of a viscount whose daughter eloped with a communist electrician, Mr Hendy's father, who later became a barrister. During the recent mayoral election campaign, leaked emails revealed, Mr Hendy discussed "refuting Boris's transport ideas" with Simon Fletcher, Ken Livingstone's chief of staff. Last week, however, in an interview with the Standard, he insisted: "I get on better with Boris than I did with Ken."

It had been believed that Mr Hendy's salary last year was £320,000 but bonuses and benefits took him well over that figure. The mystery £540,000 earner is likely to be Mr Hendy's predecessor, Bob Kiley, who resigned in 2006. Even after his resignation Mr Kiley continued to enjoy a lucrative freelance consultancy contract worth £3,200 a day and the free use of a £2 million house in Belgravia despite, in his own words, doing "not much".

Not all those on the list are as well-known as Mr Kiley and Mr Hendy, however. At least three managers on the list are, or were, receiving six-figure salaries for working on non-existent projects.

They include Christopher Dean, in a pay band of between £100,000 and £125,000 a year as project director of the West London Tram. The West London Tram was cancelled in August 2007 but Mr Dean's post still existed until at least April 2008, and possibly later.

Other managers of non-existent projects on the list include Martin Stuckey, project director of the Thames Gateway Bridge, which was cancelled last November. Mr Stuckey is paid between £100,000 and £125,000 a year. TfL confirmed that his post still exists and he is still being paid but said his job would be wound up "within the coming weeks or months".

TfL is also paying an "e-money project director" on up to £125,000 a year, even though its e-money project — to allow people to use their Oyster cards for small purchases in shops — was cancelled in May 2006. TfL confirmed that the e-money project director is still employed but said he was now working on possible new avenues of the e-money project.

TfL's top management are much better paid than their equivalents in other world cities. In 2007/8 Elliot Sander, chief executive of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had a base salary of $265,000 (£183,000) and a total package worth $340,000 (£235,000), little more than half the earnings paid to Mr Hendy.

However, the MTA is a far bigger organisation than TfL, with more than twice as many staff. Unlike TfL, it directly runs all New York City buses and the suburban and regional rail network as well as the subway.

TfL managers are also better paid than most other British public servants with far wider responsibilities. In 2007/8 the Treasury, responsible for the entire British economy, had only 15 staff paid over £100,000 a year. The ­Foreign Office had only 42 staff paid over £100,000 a year in 2006/7, little more than a third of TfL's number. The Department for Transport, which funds and supervises TfL, has only 44 staff paid over £100,000 a year.

TfL said it had a programme for ­saving £300 million a year over the next eight years and has recently announced 1,000 job cuts. Three of the 123 six-­figure jobs will be cut as part of this programme. A further five of the named posts in the list supplied to the Standard have already been superseded, although it is not clear whether these have simply been replaced with new jobs under different names. Two further six-figure jobs have been transferred to the state-owned company responsible for Crossrail.

Dozens of bean counters but nobody in charge of snow chaos

The list of top jobs provided to the Standard includes many with apparently overlapping job titles and descriptions.

Six-figure salaries are paid to a managing director of finance, chief finance officer, head of corporate finance, finance director, programme manager, programme director group procurement (finance), four principal corporate finance officers, head of investment programme oversight, head of group treasury, head of group financial accounting, head of financial shared services, head of finance, head of finance group property, head of assets management and director of group procurement.

Also in this bracket, TfL's surface transport division has a chief operating officer, a director of operations and a director of traffic operations. The Underground has a chief of operational engineering, a chief engineer and a director of engineering. TfL's "London Rail" division, which employs only 194 staff, has nine top managers on salaries over £100,000, including a human resources director earning up to £125,000 a year and a managing director on up to £225,000.

London Rail is responsible for the strategic direction of the Overground and DLR and the East London line project, but does not actually run any of these services, which are provided by private contractors. It has no responsibility for the Underground.

Among the six-figure managers is a "head of group organisational capacity and people development" for "leading the development ... of people development processes".

An energy contracts manager, a head of occupational health, a "head of process and change" and a "head of group equality and inclusion" earn between £100,000 and £125,000 a year. Even the official in charge of arranging insurance at TfL is paid a six-figure salary. The official in charge of the so far abortive project to provide cooling on deep-level Tube lines is also paid in excess of £100,000 a year.

But there appears to be nobody whose job description includes emergency or contingency planning, such as for extreme winter weather; nobody whose main responsibility is reducing the impact of TfL services on the environment. The words "green", "sustainable", "sustainability", "carbon", "CO2" and "climate change" do not appear in any six-figure manager's job description, apart from one whose responsibilities include "sustainable procurement".

There is a "group director of health, safety and environment" and other officials whose job descriptions mention the environment but they seem concerned mainly with policing internal environmental standards.

Only eight of the 108 top managers' job descriptions given to the Standard mention "customer service". Only nine include the words "efficient" or "efficiency", only one of which is in the context of services to passengers. The others refer to efficient procurement of goods or support services.

Only one of the 108 job descriptions includes the word "crime" and one includes the word "terrorism", though other managers do have shared responsibility for security.

TfL said: "Huge senior management focus is applied to emergency and contingency planning. It is simply integral to the roles of all our senior management from the Commissioner on down. Similarly, sustainability, efficiency and customer service is a common thread running across senior management and the whole organisation."